MOSCOW (MRC) -- In a late July 31 advisory, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Hurricane Center said heavy rains associated with Hurricane Isaias could begin to affect south and east central Florida late Friday night and the eastern Carolinas by early next week, potentially resulting in isolated flash flooding, reported S&P Global.
NOAA said the Category 1 hurricane was expected to reach the east coast of Florida on Saturday morning.
It said that storm surge along the northeastern Florida coast could come late in the weekend, and spread northward along the remainder of the US East Coast through early next week.
Florida Power & Light said July 31 it had a restoration workforce of more than 10,000 "ready to respond to Hurricane Isaias amid the global COVID-19 pandemic."
It said it will bring in crews from sister company Gulf Power and has secured more than 2,000 additional restoration personnel from nearly 10 states. "We are committed to restoring service in between bands of severe weather, as long as winds are below 35 MPH," the company said.
FPL owns the two-reactor, 1,600-MW Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station located two miles east of Homestead, Florida, and about 25 miles south of Miami.
According to preliminary mapping of Isaias' path, the Turkey Point facility may escape the storm's more severe western rain bands on Saturday.
FPL's 1,880-MW St. Lucie Nuclear facility located further up the Florida coast on Hutchinson Island, may not be so lucky. The center of the storm eye could pass offshore of the St. Lucie facility early on Sunday morning.
In a statement, Duke Energy Florida said it believed its customers in central and eastern Florida may experience weather-related outages.
On the natural gas front, analysts have noted that by looking at the path and what previous storms have done, typically the ones that hit the eastern part of Florida just push down gas demand for a few days and then it rebounds relatively quickly. Storms hitting the Louisiana and Houston Ship Channel areas usually have a larger market impact.
The current expected path of the storm includes the Georgia coast, where Kinder Morgan's Elba Liquefaction the smallest of the six major US LNG export facilities - is located. The operator is monitoring the storm's development, but it is too early" to determine whether a reduction in staff or liquefaction activity at the site would be needed, spokeswoman Katherine Hill said July 31.
Oil and gas production isn't expected to be affected much because Isaias is projected to remain out of the Gulf of Mexico and instead move along eastern Florida and up the East Coast.
However, a series of southern Florida ports were closing to inbound traffic on July 31, potentially affecting shipments of refined petroleum products.
The ports of Miami, Everglades, Palm Beach, Ft. Pierce, Key West, as well as the Miami River and the Florida Keys all moved to Yankee condition status on July 31, meaning that inbound traffic is closed without explicit permission from the port captains, and movements are restricted within the ports.
Other Florida ports remained open to traffic - at X-Ray status - with some elevated restrictions to ship movements within the ports. The Port of Jacksonville, including Port Canaveral and the Port of Fernandina, said it is scheduled to move to X-Ray status on the evening of July 31.
Florida relies on waterborne refined products supplies, as it has no refineries and is not served by major pipelines. Refined products are delivered primarily to marine terminals at the Port of Jacksonville and Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale on the east coast, and the Port of Tampa on the west coast.
Kinder Morgan's Central Florida Pipeline delivers refined products from the Tampa terminal to Orlando.
"We are monitoring the storm's path and activating our emergency response plans, as needed," said Kinder Morgan spokeswoman Melissa Ruiz on July 31.
As MRC wrote befoe, as Texas prepared for heavy rains and possible gale force winds, July 25-26 brought on by Tropical Depression 8 in the central Gulf of Mexico, the US Coast Guard began to restrict port activities. The National Hurricane Center on June 23 issued a tropical storm watch from Port Mansfield, Texas, just above the Mexico border, to High Island, just north of Galveston, but noted that tropical storm warnings could be issued later that day as the storm progresses westward towards land. Flooding was expected to be the main concern of Tropical Depression 8, which could have impacted some refineries in Texas, home to about 30% of total US refining capacity, and refiners were keeping an eye on the storm. Refiners like Phillips 66, which has Texas coastal refineries, were keeping a close eye on the weather.
As MRC informed earlier, US-based Phillips 66 remains open to developing another ethane cracker for its Chevron Phillips Chemical (CP Chem) joint venture, the refiner's CEO said in March 2018.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's DataScope report, PE imports to Russia dropped in January-June 2020 by 7% year on year to 328,000 tonnes. High density polyethylene (HDPE) accounted for the main decrease in imports. At the same time, PP imports into Russia rose in the first six months of 2020 by 21% year on year to 105,300 tonnes. Propylene homopolymer (homopolymer PP) accounted for the main increase in imports.
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